Wearable future: What will we be wearing in 20 years?

Despite the boom in wearable
technology in the last couple of years, it's easy to forget this corner of
consumer technology is still very much a burgeoning one. But the future of
wearables is an incredibly exciting prospect.

We have, in front of us, the green
shoots in what could be some fertile lands. Smartwatches, fitness bands, virtual reality and the like are the sprouting grounds for now but will
we still be talking about them when the mature blooms of a pan-global wearable
reality flourish?

To find the answer we found four
experts in the field willing to stake their reputations on what tomorrow might
bring and asked them what they think we'll all be wearing in 20 years' time.

Wearables in 2 years time….

Health benefits

“One of the big benefits of
wearables will be having our health and constitution monitored,” futurologist
Ray Hammond told us.

“In the early stages it will be
simple stuff like pulse, breathing rate, the number of steps we take, oxygen
levels in the blood, the amount of glucose in the blood which can just be
gathered from sweat on the skin surface. A bit later on it will be ECG. We’ll
slip on an under-vest and our wearables will provide ECG pads. If you're elderly
or have a sick baby, you could slip on a vest and have accurate
monitoring all the time.”

Fashion faux pas

“You can’t easily put wires in
garments at the moment,” explained Ben Moir, co-founder of We:Ex. “That’s one
of the major problems holding back wearable tech in fashion. It’s the way
fabrics are made and how cheaply it’s done. The idea of putting high cost
conductive fibers in these low cost textiles that will still world after
several washes and wears; it’s still to rudimentary even in two years.

“We really need nano-tech to come
through on the material side. What we might see are more guys like Ralph Lauren
dabbling in it but you won’t find technology in a £10 t-shirt for a very long
time.”

“In two years we’ll see a lot more
customisation, versatility, style, fabrics to make devices that people are
happy to attach to themselves,” added Simon Randall, managing director of OMG
Life, the company behind Autographer.

“So, I think the products will look
more accessories and clothing than tech gadgets. I think people that use really
good designers to design their products from scratch - knowing that it needs to
be worn by males and females of different sizes, heights and different fashion
attitudes and customisation - they’re the people that are going to win.”

Wearables in 5 years time….

Hardware acceleration

“In 5 years, the tech on the silicon
side, the battery life, the improvements in the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
connectivity will all be in place,” explained Simon Randall.

“In five years, there will be shirts
measuring some biometrics,” added Pekka Tolvanen, CEO of sports wearable brand Myontec.
“Those who already use heart rate monitors would like to know something more
and we hope that muscle measurement is one of those new parameters.”

Stars of CCTV

“We’re going to begin to develop our
own personal CCTV systems which will always be on,” predicts Ray Hammond.

“If we're walking along a dark road
late at night and it’s generally understood that everyone is transmitting, in
real time, vision and sound, then that’s a pretty strong deterrent. Even if
someone comes and knocks you senseless, they’ll have been seen and recorded.

“Look at a car crash or an argument
over a contract; that’s why we’ll be doing it. These personal networks will
also do two-way, real-time foreign language translation. They’ll do ID
verification and, of course, they will be part of a payment system which we can
use globally.”

Energy rush

“The core issues will be energy
harvesting and working out how to create the ability to have clothing taking
energy from your movement of your body and your shoes on the street,” Ben Moir
told us.

“My company is looking at battery
solutions like a coat hanger rack that will charge your clothing as well as
store it. You hang your jacket or your pants up and these hangers will charge
it overnight. That will provide a stopgap before energy harvesting has gone
mainstream.

“We’ll also see developments in
flexible circuits and batteries that can be printed onto any shapes and spaces
we like. That’s how we’re going to get away from all these bulky, square
wearables we see at the moment.”

Wearables in 10 years time….

Next next-gen products

“We have to go through the iteration
of smartglasses, which will probably be an eight or ten year iteration,” Ray
Hammond explained. “If our glasses or lenses are examining our eyes while we’re
using them - looking for movement, blood clots, patterns of the blood vessels,
iris movements, colouration, inflammation - that gives us a clue as a
diagnostic tool for mental and physical health.”

“By then, we’ll have sensors like
nicotine patches which can take micro samples from our body fluids and can
detect biochemical minutiae and do things like detect pain and also deliver
medicine in the right doses automatically,” added Moir.

Calling in the cloud

“In 10 years, most probably the data
integration will be heavily developed,” stated Pekka Tolvanen. “Then we’ll have
sensors all over our bodies. We might also start to see some kind of analytics
from our brains for exercise, so that we can combine how the signals start from
there and then end up in muscles and motions.”

“Assuming you’ve got some sort of
Wi-Fi-connected power mesh on your body, then these sensors can be pushing
things directly up to the cloud for processing,” added Simon Randall from Autographer. “There’s
a chance that could happen in 10 years but it relies on some fairly big
steps in power management.”

Wearables in 20 years time….

Super hero shift

“In 20 years, there’ll be a shift
towards what's’ known as transhumanism where we transcend being individual
humans,” explained Ben Moir. “It’s when we have senses that we don’t have now,
when we can see more than the visible spectrum for example. If you’re just
living your life with the five senses you were born with, then you’re missing
out on the experience. That’s wear wearables will go.

“We’ll also be able to see the world
through each other's eyes, and be connected to them more fully. You’ll be able
to feel what I’m feeling. The forward thinkers won’t even think twice about
doing implantables in 20 years' time. What that might lead to eventually is a
certain percent of the human population will leave and evolve to beyond what
the human limitations are.”

Always
connected, always recording

“Everyone will be wearing lenses of
a sort,” predicts Simon Randall. “They’ll able to constantly capture images
throughout the day which go up to the cloud services, get processed and you can
then get different types of curation from them.”

“What we’re going towards is a kind
of living in a personal halo of information and, 20 years from now, all our
interactions with the outside world - not with our loved ones or our friends or
our family - will be mediated by this halo,” added Ray Hammond.

“If someone’s approaching us on the
street, depending on the levels of privacy they’ve adopted, you may just glance
at them and see who they are, who they work for, where they’re from, what
their interests are. If you’re a friend of a friend or got some personal
connection, then the person will have the option to blink and accept you.”